scrambled eggs, buttered bread with jam, and pungent chicory. Flint was about to offer to help clean up when the front door burst open and Tybalt stormed in, holding a pair of mud caked boots under his arm.
The young dwarf was clearly agitated as he approached Flint. 'You recognize these?' he asked, holding the muddy boots up. He looked at Flint's feet. 'Those are Aylmar's old ones! I knew these were yours!'
'Good morning to you, too, Brother,' Flint said, trying hard to sound nonchalant. He had not thought about being traced by his boots! He took a sip of hot chicory and tried to keep his hand from shaking.
'Don't 'good morning' me!' Tybalt cried, slamming his fist to the table. 'What were you up to, anyway? And what possessed you to leave your boots behind?' Tybalt was working himself into a frenzy.
'What in heavens are you talking about, Tybalt?' asked Bertina, handing him a cup of the hot drink.
He waved it away in exasperation. 'It seems our visiting brother took a trip through the mountain dwarves' wagon yard yesterday. They found his muddy boots by the barn.'
Tybalt began to pace before Flint. 'That's not the worst of it. When I showed up at the constabulary for work this morning, I was told a derro had been stabbed to death and that the murderer had left behind his boots! I began to laugh, but then I nearly choked when I saw them,' he snarled, his hands clenching into fists.
Tybalt squinted at Flint. 'They have a good description of you, too! The guards you jumped got a good look at your face before you fled. Of course, the description could match practically anyone — except for the boots.'
He resumed pacing, his hands behind his uniformed back.
'And then there's Garth… he heard the description and began jabbering some nonsense about Aylmar being back from the dead to give him bad dreams. Fortunately, the der ro don't pay much attention to the village idiot, but there's some folk who know that he's got you all confused with our late eldest brother!'
'Tybalt! I won't have you calling that poor harrn such things in this house,' Bertina scolded him. 'Garth is per fectly pleasant. He just got caught between the hammer and the anvil once too often, is all,' she finished softly.
'Bertina, who cares about Garth?' Tybalt shouted. 'Flint murdered a derro in the wagon yard!'
'Aren't you convicting me without even asking if I did it?' asked Flint.
'Well, did you?' a hesitant Tybalt demanded.
'Would it matter?' Flint asked cagily.
'Of course it would!' Tybalt sank into a chair and tugged at his beard in agitation. 'Don't you see the position you're putting me in — and me with my promotion coming up! I should hand you over to Mayor Holden. I should, and I just might!'
Flint looked at him squarely. 'Do what you must, but you said yourself that the description could fit practically any dwarf in Hillhome. Why don't you just pretend you've never seen those particular boots before?'
Tybalt looked like he was being pulled in two pieces. 'I can't do that! I know those boots are yours, and I'm sworn to uphold the law, no matter who breaks it!'
'Who says the killer wore those boots?' Flint suggested.
'Perhaps they were thrown into the wagon yard by some cruel young harrns playing a trick on an old dwarf sleeping off an excess of spirits.'
'Is that what happened?' Tybalt asked eagerly, sitting up straight.
'Do you really want to know, Tybalt?'
Tybalt's eyes closed, and he shook his head quickly. He combed the fingers of both hands through his thinning dark hair. 'I shouldn't even think of doing this,' he began through gritted teeth, 'but if you leave town, at least until this blows over, I'll forget about the boots.' He frowned into Flint's face. 'You don't seem to care about your own fate, but please consider that the rest of us chose to live in Hillhome, even if you don't think our lives are very interesting or worthwhile!'
'Stop it!' snapped Bertina to Tybalt, as the muscles in
Flint's jaw tightened. 'Are you a human or a dwarf? I de clare, sometimes you and your ambitions embarrass me, Tybalt!'
'Thanks, Berti,' Flint said faintly, a hand on her fleshy arm, 'but Tybalt's right — I don't want to bring shame down on the family. I'll leave right away.' He fetched his pack and axe from a small storage room behind the kitchen.
Smiling in relief, Tybalt stepped up to Flint as the old dwarf adjusted his backpack. 'I'm sorry about this, really.
It's nothing personal. No hard feelings?' he said, thrusting his hand toward Flint.
His brother considered the beefy hand with its stubby fin gers, then turned away. 'You're a hypocrite, Tybalt Fire forge, and the worst kind for asking me to help you pretend you're being saintly instead of selfish.'
Tybalt leaped back as if struck. 'But you said I was right about you leaving!'
Flint gave him a pitying smile. 'You are, but not for the reasons you think.' He shook his head and then turned to Bertina, anxious to be done with Tybalt. He could hear his brother rushing out of the house behind him.
Flint's sister-in-law stood mute, tears filling her eyes. Her face glowed a bright crimson that paled all her previous blushes. 'You can tell me, Flint. Why would you do such a terrible thing?' she asked, but there was no harsh judgment in her voice.
Flint felt he owed her, wife of his murdered brother, as much of the truth as he dared. 'It was self-defense,' he said vaguely, measuring his words.
Bertina brightened through her tears. 'Then why don't you stay and tell the mayor that? He'll take your word over those of the derro!'
'Do you think so, if it meant he would lose the mountain dwarves' trade?' Flint shook his head. 'No, it's not that sim ple, Berti.' He hugged her awkwardly and headed for the door.
'Were are you going?'
'I don't know,' Flint said evasively. 'But don't worry, Ber tina, I'll be back some day… Soon. Say good-bye to ev eryone for me.' She slipped a sack full of food into his hands, brushed a kiss across his bristly cheek, then fled into her room at the back of the house.
Flint stood in the sorrowful silence a moment and looked around his family's home one last time. He wished he could have settled things with Basalt, said good-bye to Bernhard and his sisters — the saucy Fidelia, and naive Glynnis — but they were at work in the town. Ruberik was out in the barn, he knew, but he could not bring himself to offer an explana tion for his departure and face the inevitable tongue lashings. So, he tucked his shiny axe into his belt and walked out the door.
Flint did not notice the small shadow that cut across his path. Nor did he see that anyone was following him as he stomped through the hills to the southwest of Hillhome.
The hill dwarf was too preoccupied with finding his brother's murderer to notice anything, for he was on his way to the vast dwarven city of Thorbardin.
Chapter 7
The Kharolis Mountains were not the tallest range upon the face of Krynn, nor the most extensive. They did not contain smoldering volcanoes such as the Lords of
Doom in Sanction to the north, or the great glaciers found in the Icewall range. The ruggedness of the range's individ ual valleys and peaks, however, could be surpassed no where on the continent of Ansalon.
Sheer canyon walls dropped thousands of feet into nar row, twisting gorges. Streams poured with chaotic abandon from the heights, slashing their way deeper and deeper into jagged channels of rock, engraving their mark with each passing day. Trees survived only on the lower slopes and valleys; most of the Kharolis range was too rough or too high to support anything more than sparse patches of moss and lichen.
The crests of the range never lost their snowcaps, the hanging teeth of which descended as glaciers into the circu lar basins of the heights. These twisted and turned in every direction before finally coming to rest in the frigid
